Kimmy and Greta, Freshman Cheerleaders

[clarise]

As rookie varsity cheerleaders, Kimmy and Greta must serve the football co-captains, Steve and Roy, as slave girls. For the most part the duty involves carrying the boys' books to and from class, but the boys want more. In this story, the boys arrange a double-date at Kimmy's house.

If you like this story and want to find out what happens next, go to Kimmy Chooses Rape.
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Kimmy and Greta, Freshman Cheerleaders
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_____Brian Donner had been promised a girl, and that girl was Greta.
_____He searched the school and found his quarry. He raced down the freshman corridor and either collided with Greta, or vice-versa, the end result being the same, namely that they both went sprawling.
_____“Goddamned dweeb,” she muttered.
_____“Here, let me help.”
_____“No, no, I’ll manage.” Sure, she would. With new bruises upon her knees. Just great. Her third day of high school, and things just kept getting better and better.
_____“So,” he started.
_____“So, what?” she asked, with mounting alarm, as she realized the collision had not been entirely accidental. Perhaps he had not intended to deck her, but if he had not been attempting an interception in the first place, it might never have happened.
_____“So I heard you got detention or something on your second day.”
_____She shook her head with derision and deadpanned, “Sorry about knocking you on your ass, Greta.”
_____Brian blushed and said, “You’re right. Can we back up?”
_____“No. Go to hell.”
_____He unabashedly said, “Come on, Goldilocks”—
_____“Don’t call me that.”
_____“Why not? What? You prefer G-Spot?”
_____“Fuck you.”
_____She stomped away, but he caught up. Of course, he did. The dweeb was actually laughing. “Come on, come on. I mean Greta. I didn’t think you liked to go by Greta.”
_____“I would rather not go by anything. I would rather be left alone.”
_____“Cool. That’s cool. So, uhh, I've only seen you in the hallways with Steve Ryan, which isn’t really like dating, right? And my sister says you’re not going with anyone, and she tells me you’re really interested. You know. In me.”
_____What did the dweeb not understand about left alone? This was turning into a bad nightmare, being accosted and picked up in the corridor in front of a thousand people by the Cheri's sophomore golden boy brother, just because he needed to have someone else's hand around his damned penis. God!
_____Without even looking at him, Greta said, with as much force as his salutatory hail, “Your sister is an airhead. In case you didn’t know.”
_____Still he followed. There could be only one explanation. Word must already have gotten around, from the top of the student body to the bottom, that Goldilocks was the new girl who couldn’t say no.
_____He shuffled on his feet, rushed to catch up again, and said, “Well, yeah, you’re right about that, I guess. But I was thinking maybe we could ride together on the bus. You know, to and from the game. Like I suggested in my note.”
_____“I never replied to that note.”
_____“I know. Like, that’s why I found you.”
_____Greta knew there could be no escape, between this Thursday morning and Saturday, to avoid that predestined fate. Yet, like a victim caught in a maniacal time machine, having seen the method of her own demise and consumed by a futile bid to avoid it, she would sure as hell try.
_____“I am not riding on the bus with you or any other prick. I am riding with Kimmy Danforth.”
_____He snorted, “Who?”
_____“You heard.”
_____“You’re kidding. You are kidding, right? You? With Dogface Danforth?”
_____Greta aimed a kick between his legs, and he only just managed to twist in time to catch her foot on the flank.
_____“Owww!”
_____“Fuck off! And tell your fucking sister to fuck off, too!”
_____He rubbed his leg, wincing, and said, “Okay, cool, so I’ll see you then.”
_____She couldn’t believe it. The dweeb hadn’t heard a single word. And could she possibly have heard him right? Did poor Kimmy really already have the most demeaning locker room nickname imaginable? Dogface Danforth?
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_____Greta did not catch up with Steve Ryan until the second period bell, but he did not seem particularly put out by her dereliction of duty. He seemed content with the current state of affairs, namely, having a freshman girl, there and then, to pick on. Steve’s innuendo did not relent. He demanded a kiss and feel between each class, and by the lunch bell, he had his hands right down her sweatpants, cupping the sweet firm curves of her butt.
_____“Steve. Not in the hall. You’re going to get me into more trouble.”
_____“Well we’re gonna have to take this party somewhere private, then.”
_____“Oh, no we are not.”
_____“What’s the matter?” he asked, grinding the lump in his pants against her stomach.
_____“No offense, Steve, but you are just another dick. Been there, done that, okay?”
_____“Well what do you want, then, pussy?”
_____“Might be a good change.”
_____He laughed so hard that he had to let go of her, which she took as a mercy.
_____“Really, Steve. I will carry you’re books and stuff, but I got detention yesterday, and I do not need a repeat between now and game day.”
_____“Is Mr. Tally still bugging you?” He referred to the school's profligate vice principal.
_____“Yes.”
_____“We have to hook you up with someone. Then he’ll lay off you. The teachers can’t take too much heat. If you’re with someone, they’ll leave you alone.”
_____“Working on it.”
_____Now Steve Ryan was walking her, toward the cafeteria. He wanted something, and she had a pretty good idea what it would be.
_____“So listen. I was talking to Roy this morning, and he has this thing going over at Danforth’s house after practice. You should come. It ought to be a good time.”
_____“Which Danforth?”
_____“How many are there? You know, Dogface Danforth.”
_____“Don’t call her that.”
_____“Why not? Okay, so she’s gonna be a charity poke, but Roy says why not, right? I mean, like, a cherry’s a cherry, you know?”
_____“You and Roy should suck each other’s dicks.”
_____“Come on, relax, G-Spot.”
_____“Don’t call me that.”
_____“All your friends call you that.”
_____“Friends whom I have bled with call me that. You are not one of them, and don’t forget it, dweeb.”
_____“Tell me something, Goldilocks. Who are you always trying to impress?”
_____“What do you mean?”
_____“You know. Haven’t you ever heard of contractions? I mean, like, you talk without apostrophes. You enunciate like the Princess of Wales.”
_____“I speak a language called English. Asshole.”
_____“What’s with you today? Christ!”
_____“You suck.” She dropped his books on the floor and pushed past him.
_____As he bent to pick up his books, he called out to her retreating figure, “You haven’t said no, yet!”
_____“NO!” she yelled, without turning back.
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_____Greta slammed her lunch tray down upon the table so forcefully that Kimberly Danforth’s tray rattled.
_____“Uh oh,” said Kimberly.
_____“You have to tell Roy no. Tell him your parents will be home this afternoon, after all. Make something up. Just don’t let him into your house.”
_____“How did you find out?”
_____“Christ, Danforth! Half the football team has found out! You have invited the biggest mouth in the school to your damned house! I thought we agreed! Why did you invite Roy over to your house? Why?”
_____Kimberly twisted her fingers together in her lap. “I thought about what you said, all night. But Roy is really handsome, Greta. I like him a lot.”
_____“Roy does not like you.”
_____“You don’t know that.”
_____“Yes. I do.”
_____“He says he really likes me. He wasn’t mean or anything this morning. He was really nice, even.”
_____Greta nearly divulged the boys’ locker room nickname, just to press the point and drive some sense into Kimberly’s addled head. Dogface Danforth. She also wanted to tell Kimberly what Steve Ryan had said, just minutes ago. That Roy had called her a charity poke. But the truth would screw up her head for the next four years, even worse than the date rape that was surely coming.
_____“Kimberly. Listen carefully. Roy does not like you. He is lying. He is bringing Steve Ryan over, too.”
_____Kimberly looked up and seemed to be fighting back tears. Her lip quivered. “Roy said they would try to get you to come, too. To make me feel more comfortable. You know, like a double date.”
_____“That is not what I am for.”
_____Kimberly frowned and wondered aloud, “What are you for?”
_____God, she was such a virgin-Mary. No one could be this obtuse. “I am easy. You must know that. They will make you watch Steve Ryan do me, to get you in the mood. Then they will tag-team us.”
_____“Tag-team?”
_____“Trade us off.”
_____Kimberly’s eyes went wide, and she sat back. She dropped her fork and whispered, “You can’t be right about that. You don’t know that.”
_____“Damn it. Kimmy, listen. Roy doesn’t like you. You are a cherry. That is all.”
_____Kimberly let out a sob, upended her tray, and ran from the cafeteria.
_____Greta put her head in her hands. She rubbed her eyes, looked up, and muttered, “Hell.” Brian was coming over.
_____She stood up and turned her back on him, to chase after Kimberly.
_____“Hey, G-Spot!” Brian hailed, from thirty feet away, drawing the attention of half the cafeteria.
_____“Fuck you!” she snarled. A teacher tried to intercept her. She put up a straight arm and kept going.
_____She found Kimberly right outside the door, sobbing dismally. The silly little virgin evidently thought she had problems. Greta shook her head and tried unsuccessfully to summon pity. She would have traded the best day of her entire life for Kimberly’s present misery, would have done it joyfully, and would have experienced nothing but profound relief.
_____“Why doesn’t he like me? Why can’t I be pretty? None of the boys like me.”
_____“You are pretty.”
_____“Roy and Steve don’t think so.”
_____“They are seniors. And football jocks, to boot. Senior jocks suck.”
_____“Your brother is a sophomore. He won’t even look at me, either.”
_____“Caz has been with a steady out-of-town girlfriend since New Years. He doesn’t look at anyone but Colleen Turner, so his disinterest is nothing personal.”
_____“Is this Colleen person pretty?”
_____“Uh, yeah. Colleen is pretty good looking.”
_____“I am not. You are just being kind. If I were not a virgin, Roy wouldn’t care a single bit.”
_____“Men seldom ever do care,” Greta told her. “They have ephemeral needs. That is all.”
_____Kimberly looked up and bitterly said, “Maybe I have needs, too. You get it whenever you want. Cheri does. Faith does. Your JV friends, Stephanie and Lani, I have overheard them, talking about their weekends. They get laid every other day.”
_____“It is mostly talk, you know. You shouldn’t listen so much to the talk. You are not the only virgin on the squad. Not by a longshot.”
_____“Says you.”
_____A shadow approached, accompanied by sharp black heels. Greta and Kimberly had been crouching along the corridor wall. They looked up.
_____Greta sighed.
_____“Hi, Aunty,” said Kimberly.
_____Principal Marnie Danforth looked down at them and silently assessed them. She asked them what was going on.
_____Kimberly replied, “Greta is giving me advice. Very good advice.”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth scratched her chin and said. “Hmm. Greta? I thought your name was Goldi Locksley.”
_____Greta looked up and glared.
_____“You have changed out of that tassel get-up just in time. I was hoping to intercept you in it and assign you to detention. Any reason for the fashion change?”
_____“Battle scars. Ma’am.”
_____The principal cast a baleful eye at Greta but chose not to pursue that line of discussion. She said, “When I asked what is going on, I was not referring to this, whatever it is. I meant your antics in the hallways, for the past two days. Making spectacles of yourselves, following the football players like pet dogs and performing in the corridors. What is all of that?”
_____Kimberly replied, “It is tradition, Aunty. A frosh cheer initiation thing. We have to carry the football co-captains’ books to their classes from now to opening day.”
_____“No, you don’t.”
_____“Huh?”
_____“The tradition is hereby abolished. As of this moment. Do either of you have a problem with that?”
_____They mutely shook their heads.
_____“I didn’t think so. Now get up off the floor, and go back to lunch.”
_____The heels clicked away without another word, checked the schedules of a certain pair of senior cheer co-captains, and pulled them out of class.
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_____Kimberly Danforth thought and thought about her quandary all afternoon. At three-ten, in the girls’ locker room, she sat down beside Greta, once again, gulped, and struggled to form words.
_____Greta listened to Kimberly’s incoherence and responded with a long sigh.
_____Kimberly huffed and managed to ask, “Are you absolutely positively sure a hand job won’t be enough for Roy?”
_____“Damn it.”
_____“Greta, please. I am just asking.”
_____“Kimmy. I know you are a virgin, but God. You have a brain, right? You can’t possibly be this dense.”
_____Kimberly blushed deeply and plodded on, as though Greta had not spoken, to articulate the plan that had consumed her entire concentration for the past three hours. “I— I suppose I could give him a— you know— I could kiss it”—
_____“You mean a blowjob?”
_____“Well, yes, fellatio,” Kimberly said. “I think I could do that. If a hand job isn’t enough. But I am thinking I could give him the hand job first, into a tissue or something, right? That way he would be less likely to, umm, you know, to ejaculate”—
_____“To come in your mouth?”
_____“Well, yes. Because I think I could s—suck it. As long as I don’t have to look at it or anything. But I don’t think I could swallow his stuff.”
_____“You won’t get the chance to find out, Kimmy.”
_____“Why not?”
_____“Because Roy is going to strip you, pin you against the floor by your neck, and rape you while your face turns blue. And while you are on the floor bleeding, and feeling like you have been hit in the gut by a truck, Roy is going to high-five Steve Ryan, and then Steve Ryan is going to rape you. And then they are going to make you clean your own blood off their pricks with your mouth and thank them. And doing that will make you so ashamed that your humiliation will turn them on, and recharge them, and then they will rape you, again. Is this sinking in?”
_____Kimberly Danforth stared at her sneakers and sniffled, “I know it will be rough. I know it will hurt. You don’t have to say this stuff to scare me. I can’t stay a virgin forever.”
_____“Your first time does not have to be a date rape by two pigs who don’t care about you. I mean, Jesus, Kimmy. Rape is supposed to take a girl by surprise. You are walking right into it with open arms. It is sickening to watch.”
_____Kimberly started to retort, and her head snapped up, right along with Greta’s, because Cheri Donner marched down the row, calling their names, transparently livid. On her way she stopped, ripped down the sign-up sheet for the Pre-Thanksgiving Game Pot-Luck Supper, and tore it into tiny bits as she closed the remaining distance. Every face turned to watch.
_____“First a new coach! Then they add boys to the squad! Then you two get pulled off servant-girl duty! And now, before I even get a chance to find out what’s up with that, Danforth kills our pre-Thanksgiving supper! Goddamn it, your pain-in-the-ass aunt is tearing the whole damned team apart!”
_____Kimberly didn’t know where to hide her head.
_____Greta leapt up and snarled, “You leave her alone! It is not Kimmy’s fault!”
_____“And you! You’ve killed the servant-girl tradition.”
_____“How the hell did I do that?”
_____“With all your psycho Goldilocks bullshit. Danforth says your wacky fairytale schtick belittles women.”
_____Greta nearly cracked up at that. Playacting as Goldilocks had been an unpardonable offense, whereas lugging books for a wingnut senior football player and getting groped by him in the corridors had been simply a Fighting Sachems tradition. She quietly said, “Look, Donner. Kimmy here didn’t ask Roy to goose her in the hallways on every bell, and I didn’t ask Steve Ryan to order me to do cheers half-naked in the senior hallway. We were kind of conspicuous, right? Danforth was bound to notice. Kimmy had nothing to do with it. As for me, I’ve been begging you guys to cut me since day one.”
_____“Whatever. At least tell me you haven’t changed your mind about the other thing.”
_____“What other thing?”
_____“You know! Duhhh? My brother? Come on! He really thinks you’re hot. The point is, you gave him a good time at Faith’s, and he really likes you for real, and he’s willing to look past all the rest.”
_____“All the rest of what?”
_____“Never mind. Brian told me to tell you: our house, tonight. Dinner. Kind of an icebreaker, you know? Tell your ‘rents. You can ride back to our house with us, and we’ll give you a ride home tonight.”
_____Greta couldn’t believe it. “Can’t do it. I have plans tonight.”
_____“What plans?”
_____Greta nodded toward Kimberly and said, “Study group. Kimmy’s house.”
_____Cheri glared with a look that implied she didn’t believe it for an instant. And yet, even when wearing her most livid snarl, she couldn’t help but look beautiful. “Fine.”
_____Outside, on the lawn, Kimberly tentatively asked, “So, you have changed your mind?”
_____“No, I have not. I lied, because I don’t need Brian Donner dripping his sweat on me, this night or any other. I am still trying to convince you to tell Roy to screw.”
_____“Greta, listen. Just listen. This is important, especially if you are really not going to come. Do you think I could at least get them to wear condoms?”
_____“No way in hell.”
_____Kimberly looked crestfallen. “Why not?”
_____“Kim. They are going to rape you. They are not going to stop to fool around with rubbers!”
_____“But they could knock me up.”
_____“They don’t care.”
_____“Could I at least borrow some from you? Just in case?”
_____Greta shook her head with frustration. “I don’t have any condoms.”
_____At first Kimberly did not believe the claim. Then it seemed to throw her into a fresh round of self-rebuke. She muttered, cursed, punched the ground, pulled up clods of grass, threw them, found a disinterred earthworm, pulled the hapless thing into bits, and flung them. That last display, oddly enough, turned Greta’s stomach. After all she had endured, the spectacle of seeing Kimberly tear an earthworm into quarters somehow struck her as wantonly cruel, even though earthworms possessed less brains, and had less capacity for pain, than flies, mosquitoes, spiders, ants, and innumerable other flying and crawling things that Greta routinely gutted and crushed without a second thought.
_____Greta waited for Kimberly’s little hissy fit to abate and demanded, “What exactly is your problem, now?”
_____“Oh, nothing. Nothing. Just that you prove my point with every breath.”
_____“What point?”
_____“That I am just a pathetic virgin, that is what point.”
_____“You are raving.”
_____“Don’t you get it, Westford? You don’t even carry condoms. I have to beg borrow or steal, because maybe, if I am lucky, some guy who doesn’t give a shit about me might bust me out this afternoon and make my lifetime. Whereas you don’t even bother with condoms, because you are on the pill.”
_____Greta snorted and muttered, “I am not on the pill, either.”
_____Kimberly’s eyes turned to slits. “Yeah, right.”
_____“Cross my heart.”
_____“Well, what then?”
_____Greta shrugged, laughed bitterly, and said, “Rhythm method.”
_____Kimberly exclaimed, “Okay. Whatever. I am trying to have a serious conversation.”
_____“Me, too.”
_____Kimberly stopped up short. Greta really sounded serious. Kimberly demanded, “When was the last time you got laid?”
_____“Day before yesterday.”
_____“And when before that?”
_____“Saturday.”
_____“And before that?”
_____“Last Friday. And before that, Thursday. And the weekend before last. Friday and Saturday.”
_____“You mean Friday, and then Saturday.”
_____“No, Kimmy. I mean, from Friday afternoon, straight through Saturday.”
_____“How many guys?”
_____“Around thirty.”
_____Kimberly sat back and glared. She accused, “You are just making fun of me. Fine. I will ask someone else.”
_____“No.”
_____“Why not?
_____“Believe me, you don’t want to start asking the other girls for condoms, for your big date with Steve and Roy. You don’t want to do that.”
_____“Why not?”
_____“Because you will be a laughingstock. That is why. And besides, I wasn’t making fun of you. I haven’t lied to you once since you sat down.”
_____“I don’t believe you.”
_____“I don’t care.”
_____Kimberly lashed, “You just can’t handle that they might like me more than they like you.”
_____Great. Just great. The jealousy card, now. And the sad part was that Kimberly might really have believed it. Steve and Roy would tear her apart. Greta knew that nothing she did or said would change Kimberly’s mind. Perhaps the only way to show the virginal idiot sense was to treat her to a double date with Goldilocks. Greta took a deep breath and made a snap decision. “You know, Kimberly, maybe you are right. Maybe I can’t hack it, having to sit back on the sidelines and watch you get both of them.”
_____“That is not what I meant”—
_____“It is okay. Tell you what. I will go home after practice, drop my books off, and ride my bike to your house.”
_____“You don’t have to”—
_____“I want to. Double date. Rah-rah! It will be fun.”
_____Kimberly, her desperate, over-reaching bluff having been called, whispered, “Okay,” sounding none too certain.
_____A couple hours later, Greta dropped her books off at home, changed into a little something that Steve Ryan would most likely attempt to rip off with his teeth, and rode the hot three-speed bicycle, which she had stolen from Steve and Faith’s garage, to the Danforth residence. Kimberly lived not a mile away, on a handsome little cul de sac not unlike Azalea Circle. Greta ditched the bike in a clump of bushes and trees along Kimberly’s side yard, crossed the lawn to the house, took a deep breath, and rang the bell.
_____Kimberly greeted Greta at the door and seemed to be relieved that she had come, yet also looked vaguely resentful, almost as though she were inwardly convinced that Greta’s presence, in and of itself, might be sufficient to inspire bad behavior among the guys and spoil her prospects for a good time with Roy. This supposition on Greta’s part might perhaps have been unfair, the product of her own cynicism and nothing more. Yet her initial suspicions were amply confirmed by Kimberly herself, within two minutes of Greta’s arrival.
_____“I have done some more thinking about all the stuff you said about Roy.”
_____“Oh, no”—
_____“Greta, hear me out. Don’t you think it is possible that you attract the boys that you do, because you act out, and put out, and that is all they expect from you?” Kimberly caught herself and bit her lip.
_____Greta just looked.
_____“You are mad at me. Aren’t you?”
_____“No, not at all. Say whatever is on your mind, Kimmy. Don’t hold back on my account. This theory of yours sounds genuinely interesting.”
_____“Yes. You are mad. You are going to ditch me, now.”
_____Greta smiled and said, “Finish your thought, first.”
_____“Look. All I am saying is that you have had so many rotten boys. Maybe that is the only way you can see boys in general. Maybe you have a hard time recognizing the good ones when you see them. Take Roy, for instance.”
_____Greta groaned.
_____“He seems very nice to me,” Kimberly insisted. “For that matter, Steve Ryan seems nice to me, too. I mean, sure Roy’s been razzing me, you know, with the whole frosh initiation thing, but on the whole he has been nice. Maybe, they just don’t treat you nicely, because you don’t expect them to, or want them to.”
_____Greta calmly asked, “Well, what do you suggest? What should I do, to inspire boys to treat me better?”
_____Kimberly took the question seriously and struggled to come up with a constructive, positive reply. “I don’t know; maybe, to start, if you dressed a little more... tastefully. I mean, look at what you are wearing.”
_____Greta looked down at herself. She wore sneakers and ankle socks with pompoms; baggy pink and white checked running silks without panties, and a candyapple red sleeveless spandex top with a low cut back and a scooped front that bared her breastbone. The spandex top bore, in white block letters, the number ’69.’ She had not bothered with a bra. Her nipples poked out of the spandex atop her conical breasts. She wore her curly hair about her shoulders and kept it out of her face with a white headband decorated with pink hearts. She had not bothered with the box cutters or false pen. Steve Ryan and Roy would not be dangerous. They would be rambunctious, which would make for a refreshing change, indeed. Kimberly had been right about one thing: these boys were smoking hot. Greta expected to have fun with them, whether Kimberly played along or not.
_____“You are mad now, aren’t you?”
_____“No. Really, I am not. But they are going to be here soon, right?”
_____“Yes, in about ten minutes, unless they are late.”
_____“Okay. Well, are you going to change?”
_____Kimberly immediately flushed with embarrassment. “Why?”
_____Greta looked at her hostess with a raised eyebrow. Kimberly Danforth wore some kind of baggy gray thing over her legs, from her waist to her ankles. Not a dress, yet not pants, either. It poofed out as she moved, with big pleats, almost like it was half-filled with helium. The top, whatever it was, almost defied description. It drooped over her shoulders and draped straight down over her pants, with a bulbous flare at the hips, giving her an overall appearance vaguely reminiscent of the conical roofs of the Kremlin, with her head poking up through the apex. She had tied her frizzy black hair into a tight bun, and she wore black rimmed glasses. She looked like the school librarian’s grandmother. The shame of it was that Greta had glimpsed Kimberly comng out of the locker room shower, and the girl really did have a pretty figure, which she chose to impenetrably conceal beneath all of the protective layers, chastity belts, and other forms of subtle and overt discouragement to male attention.
_____Kimberly had asked why Greta had suggested that she change, and now she waited for an answer.
_____“Ahh, just forget it. You look fine.”
_____“Well, why did you say that?”
_____“I said forget it. Let’s set out some snacks or something.”
_____The girl seemed utterly incapable of taking advice of any kind. Greta almost wished the idiot would somehow learn about the awful locker room nickname that the boys had come up with for her. The revelation would hurt her, but it might do her good in the long run. Then Greta realized, ruefully, that she was bound to find out, soon enough, how the awful nickname would affect the girl. Either Steve Ryan or Roy would undoubtedly let it slip at some point in the next two hours. Greta would have to find a means, early on in the soirée, to warn them against doing just that. Then again, a warning might backfire. The boys might then make a point of letting the nickname slip, just for fun.
_____The girls set out bowls of refreshments, a preparatory task that Kimberly took on with gusto, even though Greta didn’t think the boys would so much as glance at the chip bowls and had only suggested it to change the subject. While they went about with the diverting chores, Kimberly did her best to keep upbeat.
_____“I did steal a few condoms from my Dad’s bedside table.”
_____“Won’t he miss them?”
_____“Naw. They are really old. Dad used to wear them when Mom went off the pill and after they had me. But Dad has been snipped. Greta, I know you were only kidding, before, about using the rhythm method.”
_____“No, Kim, I was not kidding about that.”
_____“I know when people are patronizing me.”
_____“I was not patronizing you.”
_____“You could give a condom to Steve. If you wanted to be safe.”
_____“Thanks, Kimmy, but I am all set. Really.”
_____Kimberly dug the two condoms out of a pocket, turned them over in her hands, and took a deep breath. “I can’t believe I am really going to do this.”
_____“Are you still certain, Kimmy? We can still call this off.”
_____“No. I have decided. Roy is really nice. And sex is a natural thing. Everyone does it. Everyone but me. Until now. No big deal.”
_____Greta had no answer. Instead, she took that last opportunity to give Kimberly fair warning. “Listen. When the guys show up, I plan on being me.”
_____“That is cool. Me Kimmy, you Greta.”
_____“No, Kimberly. Me Goldilocks. Greta has tried to talk you out of this for two days straight. Nothing has worked. When the guys come, I am going to be Goldilocks. And Goldilocks is going to have a good time, no matter what happens. The guys are going to hurt you. And it won’t matter to me.”
_____Kimberly chewed on her lip, scowled, and murmured, “You are just trying to scare me. It is not working.”
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_____Steve picked up Roy, and they got lost on Roy’s directions, which he had transcribed while trying unsuccessfully to pretend to be nice to Kimberly Danforth. They drove around town aimlessly, ostensibly to pick up their trail, yet also none too certain that being lost, on the way to Dogface Danforth’s house, was really such a bad thing.
_____Roy was the senior starting quarterback and co-captain; seventeen and a half years old; six-two and one hundred ninety-five pounds; a B-plus student with early admittance to Zoo Mass Amherst; nine and a half inch erection by his measurement; seven point one inch erection by clinical measurement; first laid at thirteen years old; fifteen partners claimed; eight partners actual; two girls impregnated, both aborted on their parents’ family insurance coverage.
_____Steve Ryan, the senior starting cornerback and co-captain, stood six-one and weighed one hundred eighty-two pounds; an A-minus student with several applications submitted and no responses; seven inch erection by his measurement; six point one inch erection by clinical measurement; claimed to have been first laid at twelve, though his actual age had been fifteen; five partners, zero pregnancies, zero abortions. Steve, unlike Roy, had broken in two virgins, and thus the impending act had no novelty, and he could as well have done without it. That they had gotten themselves lost did not particularly irritate him.
_____Roy did not share Steve’s indifference. Kimberly Danforth had a little problem that he needed to solve for her. That he couldn’t stand to look at her would not present a difficulty. He would simply thrust a bag over her head, or smother the dumb gash in a pillow. If they could ever find the dog’s house, which seemed unlikely.
_____“Fugly Dogface Danforth and her useless directions. Stupid bitch. Why did I have to get Dogface? You get that hot little firecracker, G-Spot, and I get fugly Dogface. What’s up with that? How the hell did that happen?”
_____“You just made me miss our turn again.”
_____“Stop changing the subject. Cheri set you up with G-Spot, right?”
_____Steve chuckled and said, “Nah. You kidding? Goldi’s the hottest thing since Cheri herself, and Cheri’s jealous as hell. She’d never show it, but she’s ripshit that I have Goldi. Take my word for it: Cheri would’ve stuck me with Dogface if she’d had the choice. Cheri wouldn’t have let me within a mile of Goldi, but it wasn’t up to her.”
_____“Then what happened? Why do I have to suffer?”
_____“Simple. Cheri and Faith told the froshes about the slave-girl gig. Dogface said no out of hand, like she’s some kind of stuck up feminazi. So Goldilocks, or whatever her name is, jumped up and said, ‘Fine. First dibs, and I pick Steve.’”
_____“You’re shitting me.”
_____“That’s how it went down. According to Faith.”
_____They had come to a stop light. Steve perused Roy out of the corner of his eye and saw him gaping back.
_____Roy demanded, “Why would Goldilocks pick you over me?”
_____The light turned green. Steve Ryan stomped on the gas and said, a bit perturbed, “Why wouldn’t she?”
_____“Dude. Come on. Everyone knows I have the bigger dick.”
_____Steve grinned, made a turn, and said, “Somehow I get the feeling Goldilocks gets so much dick that she couldn’t care less.”
_____“Good point,” Roy conceded with dejection. “She is one hell of a firecracker, though. You think Goldi, and me, would be too fucked up? You know, me a senior, robbing the cradle and asking out a freshman?”
_____“Don’t bother. Cheri’s trying to fix her up with Brian, and Goldi’s not even biting on that. She has some kind of fancy steady boyfriend at Andover Academy, I’ve heard. That’s why she’s so together and above it all. For a frosh.”
_____“Yeah, but she’s not stuck up, though. I mean, like, she’ll party,” Roy observed.
_____“Yeah. Seems that way.”
_____“You get all the luck. You get the partygirl. All I get is a Dogface.”
_____Steve laughed and pulled onto Kimberly Danforth’s street. “Look at it this way. Goldi’s probably screwed half of Boston and Cambridge. You’re getting a cherry. And say what you will about Dogface, she has pretty good tits.”
_____“Trade you.”
_____“Not on your life. But we’ll swap. After. If Goldi’s into that.”
_____“You da man!”
_____Steve parked on the sidewalk, and they walked up to Dogface Danforth’s house. On the way, Steve Ryan stopped, nonplussed, at a clump of brush and trees. He stared at an old beat up bicycle that had been recently stashed there, shook his head, and laughed.
_____“What’s with you?”
_____“Oh, nothing. Let’s go party.”
_____
________

_____
_____In the last two minutes preceding the arrival of the boys, Kimberly got an inadvertent peek up the leg holes of Greta’s running shorts and glimpsed nothing but pink. The notion struck her that perhaps she might be overdressed, after all. She ran upstairs to change into more appropriate attire for a double date. Greta watched the front yard for the grand entrance of the boycake. Well, at least the silly virgin had agreed to change. That had to count for something.
_____Greta had warned Kimberly repeatedly that the guys did not respect her, and that she was simply setting herself up for date rape. And yet, could the act, which would occur all too soon, really be considered rape, after all the warning, stated with cold, hard clarity? Did Kimberly not beg for it with every act? She had invited the boys, plural, to her house, before she could even have known that Greta would have agreed to go. She had obstinately ignored every warning from Greta, and had even said, on more than one occasion, that she would not be the only virgin on the cheer squad. She had actually stolen old condoms from her own father. (Greta had not had the heart to tell the idiot that latex did not have a fifteen year shelf life, and that the things would split within seconds even if, by some miracle, Roy took pity on her and agreed to put one on.) The dizzy fool had even set out bowls of refreshments! Tortilla chips and soda pop for the audience to her own rape! So, the designation struck her as being all wrong. The acts to come would be classifiable as bad behavior, on the part of the boys, surely— reprehensible, even. But rape? No, no, no. Not with dippy Kimberly Danforth’s active complicity at every stage, and her stubborn refusal to listen.
_____Just as the boycake headed up the front lawn toward the door, Kimberly rushed down the stairs in a new outfit. Leave it to her. The new getup had even more layers. At least the new costume looked less baggy and marginally less clownish. Tight blue jeans vaguely suggested the possession of a figure, which the imperiled virgin had seen fit to camouflage by draping an extra-large rugby shirt and some kind of cable knit thing over her butt without tucking anything in.
_____“I saw them from my window.”
_____“Kimmy, could you at least lose the sweater?”
_____“Huh?”
_____“Forget it.”
_____The doorbell rang.
_____Kimberly froze in terror, so Greta sighed and opened the door.
_____Steve Ryan had rung the bell, so now Greta looked up at his brooding James Dean scowl, and she just melted, right then and there. Well, rape or no rape for Kimberly, Greta had a feeling that she would have a good time with sweet-and-sour Stevie-boy.
Then, the scowl turned into a thousand watt grin. “My slave-girl!”
_____“Steve, my big macho football master.”
_____He snatched Greta up by her waist, picked her up off her feet, and kissed her mouth until her toes curled.
_____Kimberly gaped at them, too overcome by shock to appreciate Greta’s technique, the way she parted her lips into a small ‘o’ and molded herself to his body from her sternum to her knees, with both calves bent up, docile and trustful that he would not drop her. Kimberly had never been so much as pecked by a boy at a dance, and now, absorbing Greta’s masterful portrayal of the flaxen haired seductress, Kimberly began to appreciate that she was way out of her league.
_____Steve felt a hard tap on his shoulder and broke the kiss with Greta to step out of the doorway.
_____Roy entered. He took one look at Kimberly, who appeared to be ready either for an unseasonably frigid Thanksgiving game or for an evening of Christmas carols, and his lip curled. “Kim,” he said.
_____Kimberly replied, “Hi, Roy.”
_____Greta,who was being fondled indecently— or quite decently indeed, depending on the point of view— playfully teased, “So. What happened with you two? You guys know this date is running on an egg timer, right? You couldn’t read simple directions?”
_____Kimberly felt appalled by Greta’s forwardness and rudeness, because she did not know the first thing about boys. This, of course, was the crux of the problem that she did not know she had.
_____Roy shrugged and said, “Stevie did his best. He blew through two lights. But we hit a lot of traffic.”
_____Greta unsympathetically teased, “You should have ridden bikes and cut through a few yards.”
_____“Speaking of which,” Steve Ryan growled, “how did you get here?”
_____“Oops.”
_____“Yeah. Oops. ‘Fess up, Westford. How did you end up with my bike?”
_____“That piece of shit is yours?”
_____“I built it from junkyard parts a couple summers ago. I worked real hard on it for three whole months.”
_____“It shows. The thing nearly fell apart beneath me on the way over here.”
_____“I have a faster bike, but that thing is theft-proof, because no one would bother to steal it.”
_____“You can say that again,” Greta concurred. “It belongs in a trash compactor.”
_____“So how did you get it?”
_____“I stole it,” she replied, without a trace of remorse.
_____“When? How?”
_____“Out of your garage. The other night. I lifted the rattiest piece of junk off your bike rack.”
_____Kimberly gasped, “Greta!”
_____The guys ignored Kimberly. Steve looked indignant, and impressed, and perhaps a bit flattered, too, that Greta Elisabeta Westford, a.k.a. Goldilocks, had chosen his bike, out of all the bikes left unattended in the world’s unlocked garages, to steal.
_____Roy simply looked smitten, and not by Kimberly. Of course Kimberly had not noticed this turn of events yet, but it surely had not been lost on Greta. Kimberly would hate her later, for taking both guys, if it ended up working out that way. But at least Kimberly would keep her chastity.
_____“Don’t look so put out,” Greta said indifferently. “I will return it when I am done with it.”
_____“Yeah? When will that be?”
_____“When I graduate.”
_____Steve Ryan roared his approval, snatched her up, and kissed her again, more effusively than before. He murmured into her mouth, “I hope you’re gonna pay me for it.”
_____“Ohhhh, all right,” Greta agreed grudgingly, kissing back.
_____By this time, Kimberly could not help but notice that Roy, her purported date, could not take his eyes off Greta’s bare, tanned, slender, smoothly shaved legs, which at this point in the proceedings were wrapped tightly around Steve Ryan’s waist, or that Steve Ryan had slipped both hands up the bottom of Greta’s pink and white checkerboard shorts, and palmed both cheeks of Greta’s tight little bottom, or that a gray circle of wetness gradually bloomed in the upturned crotch panel of Greta’s running silks, because she adored French kissing, and rubbing her nipples against the chest of a man, and being held up off the ground by a man’s powerful hands. She adored Steve Ryan’s fingertips most of all, which unabashedly explored the hot wet folds of her sex like writhing baby snakes, and although Goldilocks knew that there must be soft, comfortable beds upstairs, she felt no particular compulsion to suggest that they undertake a protracted survey of the house, since the granite tiles and hard oak staircase of the foyer looked just fine, too, for the things that she needed Steve Ryan to do to her, the point being that Kimberly, looking on, had never before seen Goldilocks in action and could not comprehend the pace of her progress. Kimberly had been thinking along the lines of working up to kissing toward the end of the first hour, with breaks for tortilla chips and soda pop, in the hopes of limiting Roy to a hand job, or at the uttermost need, a blowjob, over the course of the entire date. Yet the guys had barely made it through the foyer, and lucky Steve Ryan had already rounded third.
_____Roy made one half-hearted foray into sociability. “So, you and Goldi, huh?”
_____“What do you mean?” Kimberly demanded with a scarlet blush.
_____“I mean, you and Goldi – or Greta, or whatever her name is— friends. It’s hard to picture, that’s all.”
_____“Why?”
_____He shrugged and said, “Oh, I don’t know. Goldi is Goldi. And you are, well, you.”
_____Kimberly conceded, “Yes, well she is a hard act to follow, that is for sure. I mean, from her very first day she has stolen the show. And she has gotten along so well with all the teachers, being called out of tryouts into meetings”—
_____He snorted and asked, “What teachers? What meetings?”
_____“Well it is not like they included me. Meetings with Coach Bruno, and Coach Klein, and she has even been called out by Mr. Tally. Probably about the halftime shows, I suppose.”
_____Roy cracked up.
_____“What?”
_____Roy guffawed and scoffed, “Are you for real?”
_____Greta pulled her mouth off Steve Ryan and admonished, “Leave her alone, Roy. She’s a damsel, that’s all.”
_____“You’re telling me.”
_____“What?” Kimberly demanded.
_____“You don’t want to know,” Greta advised her.
_____“Yes, I do!”
_____Greta shrugged and returned to kissing Steve, who now had both middle fingers deep in her vagina and somehow seemed on the verge of gently massaging the ever-present interior burn away. Greta ground her pelvis against his washboard stomach, rubbed her nipples against his beautiful chest, and wanted their respective clothing off now.
_____Roy, feeling vaguely irritable, sensed that Goldi would not really care at that point if he elaborated a bit for Kimberly, so he mocked, “What do you want to know for? Feeling left out?”
_____“I just want to know,” Kimberly petulantly insisted.
_____“Goldi’s not getting called into cheer planning sessions, dumb-ass. She’s getting boned by those old gray limpdicks.”
_____Kimmy’s indignation flared again, the rage that overtook her mind whenever she sensed, fairly or not, that she was being patronized. “You don’t know that.”
_____“Yeah, sure I don’t.”
_____Goldilocks pulled her mouth off Steve Ryan long enough to say, “Tally’s not a limpdick. He’s a bedpost.”
_____Roy and Steve burst into hearty laughter. Goldi returned to frenching Steve, but put a hand up. Roy reached over and slapped Goldi’s hand. Kimmy just stood there, glaring at all three of them, angrier than ever.
_____“You guys are just teasing,” she insisted, at a loss for a more effective retort.
_____“Right. Sure we are, Danforth. Goldi’s just the next in line. Just like Cheri Donner, and Steve’s sister for the past four years.”
_____“Leave my sister out of this,” Steve mumbled into Goldi’s open mouth, without much conviction.
_____“Does my aunt know about this?” Kimmy demanded.
_____Her three guests laughed even louder.
_____Roy took a seat on the bottom of the stairs, so he could look up at what Steve Ryan’s hands were doing inside Goldi’s shorts.
_____Kimberly perceived, quite accurately, that things were both getting out of hand and leaving her far behind. She stammered, “There are refreshments. In the family room.”
_____“Well bring’em out here, Danforth!” Roy demanded. “Hurry up.”
_____Kimberly retreated from the foyer, cheeks hot. She overheard Greta giggling, “Ease up on Kimmy. She is trying really hard.”
_____“Yeah,” Roy muttered, “so am I.”
_____“Be nice,” Greta warned.
_____“What’s in it for me?” Roy wanted to know.
_____“Whatever,” Goldi replied.
_____Kimberly clamped her hands to her ears and rushed out of earshot, into the family room. She stared at the bottles of soda pop, which she had arranged in a small ice filled tub; and the three little dishes of salsa, arranged upon the coffee table according to heat, beside the bowl of chips. To her credit, she realized that if she carried the food back out into the foyer and presented it to them, they would mock her relentlessly. None of them cared in the least about food. They had moved past food, within thirty seconds of the boys’ arrival. Only Kimberly cared about food, because stage fright had paralyzed her, and had left her desperate for diversions. What did she expect to do with Roy for the next hour or two, until her parents came home from work? Sit upon the sofa, sip soda pop, munch on tortilla chips, test the salsa, and get to know each other? Roy didn’t want to know her; he wanted to bust her cherry, and then go home.
_____The epiphany struck her with a force that even she, herself, found both ironic and darkly comical, since Greta had bent over backward to warn her. In hindsight, Greta’s accurate assessment of the boys’ motivations struck Kimberly as blatantly obvious. She should have realized that Greta was world-wise beyond her years. Kimberly should have listened. Now she didn’t know what to do. If she went back with the food in tow, they would laugh her out of her own house. Yet if she went back without the food, Roy would take it as a tacit concession that she was open to alternatives. And if she returned to Roy to invite him back here, to the rumpus room couch, she would be left alone with him, without the comparative safety of having two other people in the room. Roy would be less inhibited, in the absence of friends in the room, and he might not stop at kissing. Kimberly somehow had to draw this date out for roughly two hours, yet in so doing she needed to fulfill two contradictory goals: to come out of this ordeal with her dignity intact, and yet also leave Roy feeling as though he hadn’t wasted an afternoon. Tomorrow morning, at school, Roy had to be left with the lingering impression that she had given him a good time, so that he would not make fun of her, and talk about her behind her back, and spread rumors that she was nothing but a fugly little bone-dry virgin who had only made the cheerleading squad because her aunty happened to be the principal. Kimberly needed to retain her self-respect, and leave Roy satisfied, without putting out, if possible. Kimberly had no idea how to accomplish those goals, which should not have been surprising, since, as Greta had warned her, the goals were absurd and impossible to achieve in combination. And so she stood there, staring through the coffee table at a point roughly aligned on the center of the earth, paralyzed. At some point she snapped from her reverie to perceive that it had become quiet in the foyer. What had happened to Roy?
_____She crept back out into the foyer to spy on her guests and find out why it had become so quiet. She suspected, altogether incorrectly, that Greta might already have lured the boys upstairs to a bedroom. Kimberly had wanted to warn Greta in advance that the bedrooms were off limits, but she had never gotten the chance. She peeked her head around a corner. Her three guests had not left the foyer, but the reason for the silence induced a small strangled cry from her throat.
_____Their clothes were still on, after a fashion, but Greta’s candyapple red spandex top had been hiked up around her collar bones. Steve Ryan had pulled the backs of her running silks right up between the crack of her butt, revealing a tanned sweaty bottom marred by bruises. Roy—supposedly Kimberly’s date— sandwiched Greta from behind, palmed her bare breasts, and industriously sucked a hickey into her neck.
_____Goldilocks heard Kimberly Danforth’s cry of shock and absently called, “Kimmy, there you are; where have you been? Come play with us.”
_____
________

_____
_____Not thirty seconds after Kimberly had retreated from the foyer to fetch the refreshments, Steve Ryan had glanced at Roy, who had been left standing there alone, nonplussed by his many and varied misfortunes. Steve had winked and had said, “You can come join Goldi and me until your hot date comes back.”
_____“Yeah,” Greta breathed, “come help warm me up.”
_____Roy did not have to be told twice. He stepped right up behind Greta and sandwiched her. “This sure beats fugly Kimmy,” he muttered.
_____Greta giggled and said, “Stop that.”
_____“Well, she is,” Roy insisted. “She looks like someone beat her with a stick. She’s fugly. Fucking ugly.”
_____“I know what it means, Roy. I have heard it myself.”
_____Steve scoffed, “Yeah, right, sure you have.”
_____Greta cooed happily as Roy rubbed his face through the back of her hair and nibbled on her neck. She murmured, “Every girl’s gone through an ugly duckling phase.”
_____Roy skeptically muttered, “Yeah, sure you did. You were probably a hot little dolly from the day you were born.”
_____“You are missing the point. Kimmy is very sensitive. Don’t be mean.”
_____“Who? Dogface Danforth?”
_____Greta reached back, slapped Roy’s face, and admonished, “Don’t you dare call her that. She is trying hard to fit in, by inviting us over. Try to be nice. Don’t be a dweeb.”
_____Roy tried to be nice. He squeezed her nipples very nicely. He nibbled on her neck nicely, as well.
_____“You are going to give me a hickey,” she complained.
_____Roy muttered something nonsensical but didn’t stop.
_____Steve hadn’t stopped either, and now he so thoroughly took control of Greta’s parted lips that she could say no more.
_____All three effectively forgot all about their hostess and ceased to wonder whether she would have the gall to come back. The prospect did nag somewhat on Roy’s mind, because if Kimmy ever did return, he would presumably have to break up the present threesome and join her. He murmured something along those lines. “We should have taken this party to Goldi’s house.”
_____Greta pulled off Steve’s mouth and declared, “No way. Not possible.”
_____“Why the hell not?”
_____“Because the ‘rents would have a problem with seeing their precious angel sandwiched between two senior dicks, for one thing. And for another thing Cazzie is home and he is not going to find out about this.”
_____“He’ll find out eventually,” Steve assured her.
_____“Oh, no he won’t. You and Faith co-exist, and get your cheap kicks, without embarrassing each other. Same deal for me and Caz. I don’t want him hearing about me, and getting into fights over me in the locker room. This stays between us, or I will kick your balls in and go home right now. Promise me.”
_____“Okay, okay, I promise.”
_____Roy, behind them, didn’t say anything. Steve punched his head.
_____“Owww! Okay, okay, I promise.”
_____They returned to their previous pursuits. Greta had to concede that Steve had been right. Ultimately, Casimir would find out that she could not help but feed her addiction. But with any luck, he would make the observation on his own, and not be compelled to hear about it in the locker room.
_____Greta began to grow concerned about the hickey that Roy seemed intent on chewing into her neck. “You should go find your date, Roy,” she suggested.
_____“Don’t rush me.”
_____Some time later, Kimberly made her reappearance, and had neglected to bring the food. Greta called her over and invited her to be a more engaging hostess. Kimberly seemed to be rooted on the spot, and Greta, still sandwiched between the boys, realized that virginal little Kimberly, who had invited them over for a double date, might have trouble with the tableau. She gave Roy a nudge with her head and whispered, “Uh, Roy, you are wanted.”
_____Roy had latched onto the back of her neck with his teeth, and palmed both bare breasts from behind, and would not let go.
_____Kimberly stiffly admonished, “I am responsible if this gets out of hand. I feel like I can’t leave you guys alone for two seconds.”
_____Goldilocks said, “Kimmy, this is your party, and you are definitely in charge. But we don’t need a babysitter, okay? Come join us. Try to relax.”
_____“Yeah,” Roy muttered, “get the stick out of your ass.”
_____Kimberly labored to restore control of the situation, and coldly said over the inane giggles of Goldilocks, “At least come in out of the doorway.”
_____Four male hands attended to Goldi’s erogenous zones, and she reciprocated by working her fingers under the waistbands of their trousers. Roy, who sandwiched her from behind, proved to be a difficult reach, but she managed.
_____They did not seem inclined to move from the foyer.
_____“You certainly don’t waste any time,” Kimberly accused.
_____“Yeah, Greta,” Steve agreed, “and what’s with that, anyway? Cheri says you’re already taken. Do you really have a steady boyfriend?”
_____“I sure do,” replied Goldilocks. “His name is Christopher. He’s my beau.”
_____“And your beau doesn’t care that you’re a partygirl?”
_____“What he doesn’t know....”
_____From behind, Roy panted, “You sure are hot, for a frosh. How many boyfriends have you had?”
_____“Who cares?” Goldi retorted.
_____“I do. How many?”
_____“Who knows?” Goldi wondered.
_____“How old were you when you lost your cherry?”
_____“None of your fucking business,” replied pretty little blue-eyed Goldilocks.
_____Kimberly gave up on her attempts to herd them into the rumpus room and worked up toward kicking them out of the house. Meanwhile she imparted a moral lesson through clenched teeth. “For a girl who supposedly has a steady boyfriend, you sure don’t act it.”
_____Goldi indifferently mumbled into Steve Ryan’s mouth, “I don’t see him here. If he can’t be bothered to show up, screw him.”
_____Kimmy lashed, “You didn’t invite this boyfriend of yours, and you know it!”
_____Roy suggested, “Forget about Greta and come over here, Danforth. Time to redeem yourself.”
_____“Redeem myself?”
_____“Yeah. Time to see if you can French kiss,” he explained. “You know, swap spit.”
_____“You are a grotesque, insensitive jerk.”
_____Roy declined to detach from Greta long enough to retaliate.
_____Greta listened intently to Kimberly’s progressively more strident symptoms of cold feet and could not ever recall having experienced such a sensation, because her own virginity had literally been ripped from her body at so vulnerable and tender an age that she had been at a loss to comprehend the enormity of what had been done to her, and had tried to conceal the defilement from her parents and from everyone for weeks, an intolerably long duration over which the core of her incipient womanhood had withered and died. Ever since then there had been no reason for reticence, or ambivalence, or misgivings at the hands of nice virile misters, nothing to protect, nothing to cherish, nothing to value, because Goldi had no value, to herself or to anyone, and someday she would end up in a dumpster where she belonged, wherein the hydraulic compactor would reduce her being to an inconsequential wet smear.
_____Now, at the cusp of Kimberly’s defining moment, she needed the guidance of an experienced, mature female mentor, and God help her, she had a chosen, of all people, Greta Elisabeta Westford’s nymphomaniacal alter persona, Goldilocks. Then again, it could have been much worse: the other alter persona, Goldi Locksley, might have dropped in with knives.
_____Kimberly’s stridency hit its apogee, and she made an honest attempt to convey her urgency lightly. “All right; I need all three of you to break it up, so we can move this bash into the rumpus room. I will count to three. One”—
_____Roy’s shorts fell to his ankles just as he muttered, “Oh, shut up, Danforth.”
_____The count abruptly halted. Discomfiture transformed to fury.
_____“Watch yourself, Roy,” Greta muttered. “Tell her, Steve,” she added, and she whispered the accursed nickname, which Kimmy had never heard and which would certainly shatter her, if she ever did.
_____“She’s right, Roy,” Steve advised. “Be careful. Watch your mouth.”
_____Greta’s pink shorts dropped to the floor, and Roy lifted the sandwiched girl high enough for Steve Ryan to latch onto one of her breasts.
_____Kimberly knew what would happen next, right there in her foyer. She expelled the contents of her lungs as though she had been punched in the gut. Everyone had warned her that Greta was no good, and they were right. As for Roy, he was so mean, so awful, that she just couldn’t believe that she had actually wanted him, and what made her even angrier was that Greta had been right all along, and had tried to warn her repeatedly that Roy was a complete jerk, and didn’t respect her at all. She did not want to lose her virginity, or anything else, to Roy, and she just wanted this date to end. Motivated by the force of that conviction, she said something rash, given the circumstances. “I think you had all better go. Pick up your clothes and get out.”
_____Roy had been in the process of trying to notch himself into Greta’s backside, and Kimberly’s declaratation struck him speechless.
_____Steve Ryan demanded of Greta, “Is she serious?”
_____“I think so. Do me, Stevie-boy; poke me fast!”
_____Steve did not have to be told twice, and punched himself deep into the heart of pretty little Goldilocks.
_____Roy faced a more difficult task, given the less accommodating aperture at his disposal, but he gave it his all.
_____Kimmy, mortified, screamed, “All three of you, stop rutting like animals and get out of my house!”
_____“Oh, Christ,” groaned Steve Ryan, as he bashed himself in and out of Greta’s receptive tummy.
_____“Ignore her,” Goldilocks advised, just a bit too loudly.
_____The football co-captain behind Greta succeeded in his humble endeavor, and an odd sort of calm pervaded the scene. Greta wrapped her ankles around Steve Ryan’s back and passively rocked up and down between the two sweaty football captains.
_____Kimberly stridently railed, but no one listened.
_____Roy exhaled and absently advised his hostess and erstwhile date, “Danforth, why don’t you go back to your chips and salsa? We’re busy here.”
_____“You are a filthy pig!”
_____“You’re one to talk, Dogface!”
_____Both Greta and Steve Ryan cringed. Roy had overstepped the line.
_____Kimmy wailed, “What?”
_____“Dogface Danforth! That’s your name! Fugly little Dogface Danforth! What? Fine! Go ahead and run! Go to your room, Dogface! Useless twat!”
_____Steve Ryan and Greta watched their hostess flee up the stairs.
_____“That was not so nice,” said Steve Ryan.
_____“Yeah,” agreed Greta. “You weren’t supposed to say that. I’m taking your miserable prick up the ass for a reason, you know.”
_____Roy uttered an exasperated growl, drove himself deep into Greta’s guts, and griped, “There’s only so much one person should have to take. Forget her.”
_____“Okay,” sighed the easily amenable, doubly encumbered Goldilocks.
_____They did manage, at some point, to find their way into the rumpus room without ever uncoupling. The chips and condiments went untouched.
_____Greta had long since overcome the ever-present intrauterine burn; the guys had pounded her numb, and their foamy semen felt like a soothing balm in her guts. Oddly enough, tender lovemaking between a single partner, such as Nathan, her beautiful Nubian godling of Thayer Hall, did nothing but hurt. In order to overcome the white-hot fire, Greta had to be drilled senseless, past the point of exhaustion and endurance. Only when she had been ravished beyond the capacity of her twisted, ruined nerves to feel could she begin to endure copulation without grinding her teeth down to the marrow.
_____The boys occasionally engaged in a perverse bastardization of pillowtalk by discussing Greta as though she were not between them, that moment, perforated from the anterior and posterior simultaneously. At times, one or the other would attempt to include her.
_____Roy asked, “So, tell us, what is it with all the bumps and bruises? What happened to you?”
_____“Just been used, that’s all,” replied Goldilocks with closed eyes, panting in time with their thrusts in and out of her belly.
_____“You like it rough. That’s what I’ve heard.”
_____Of course he had. She resentfully murmured, “Does it turn you on, Roy?”
_____“Yeah. It does.”
_____“You want to hear all about my boo boos, Roy?”
_____“Sure I do.”
_____“Because you are as sick as they are.”
_____“Maybe I am.”
_____Steve warned, “Roy. Dude. Ease up. Chill.”
_____“Yeah, yeah. Fine. Don’t hit the girls.”
_____Greta laughed bitterly at the remark. Yeah, sure. Don’t hit girls. Drill their brains out; rape them senseless; fill them with filthy spawn until they shit out bastards, but above all no fists. One must be a gentleman, after all, as one ravishes the girls.

____________


_____Shod feet raced down a staircase beyond the rumpus room door, accompanied by the cries of feminine distress. Roy, Goldilocks, and Steve Ryan groaned simultanously.
_____“Shit. Dogface is back.”
_____The door slammed open and rattled against the wall. “They’re home! My parents! Get out! Get the hell out of here!”
_____Steve pulled out of Goldi’s mouth and yanked Roy backward by the chest. They scrambled into their clothes and stumbled toward the open door.
_____Kimberly wailed, “No, no! Out the back! That way! Go, go!” She pushed, punched, and herded them toward the sliding doors that opened out onto the backyard patio. She threw the slider open, shoved them out, and tossed their clothes out after them. “Run! Through the woods!” She slammed the door shut, locked it, rushed back into the rumpus room, and groaned. She had been so focused on ejecting the guys that she had completely forgotten about Greta.
_____Goldilocks had not budged. She lay on her back, with mouth open, eyes closed, her pelvis off the floor, her orifices proffered subserviently to all comers, as though Steve and Roy had just stepped out for a bathroom break. Kimberly watched for a moment, both intrigued and repelled, as Goldilocks fondled a bruised nipple and painted her upended clitoris with semen.
_____“Greta!” she hissed.
_____The eyes snapped open.
_____“Get a grip, Greta! Clean up! Get dressed!”
_____Kimberly rushed out of the room, slammed the door, and prayed that Greta would be able to gather enough presence of mind to put herself back together. To buy some time for Greta, she coaxed her Mom and Dad into the kitchen and explained that she had a guest, a friend from school, a fellow cheerleader. Kimberly’s mother immediately went on the defensive and reminded Kimberly that she did not abide the cheerleading program and had only agreed to let her go out for the activity because her own sister— Kimberly ‘s Aunty Marnie— had just been installed as the full-time principal of the school.
_____“Who is this friend, and where is she?”
_____“In the rumpus room. She is a freshman, like me.”
_____“What is her name, dear?”
_____Kimberly replied, “Greta Westford.”
_____Mother instantly paled and traded a baleful stare with Father.
_____He raised his eyebrows, as though to say, ‘You had better handle this.’
_____Kimberly blurted, “What?”
_____Mother set her handbag and attaché case on the table and said, “Dear, I have heard that the Westford girl is trouble.”
_____Kimberly defensively said, “She got into a scrape or two in middle school, but she is over that. She is really nice.”
_____Father said, “Leopards don’t change their spots, honey.”
_____Kimberly closed her eyes and counted to three. On reflection, she knew that her father was right. She loved and respected her parents, and deferred to them in everything, for better or worse. This practice seldom steered her wrong. And how could she doubt the veracity of her father’s assertion, after the events of the past three hours?
_____“Honey,” Mother said, “We want you to be happy at your new school, and we want you to make new friends. But you have to use better judgment than this.”
_____“Mom, she is trying very hard, and she wrote all of our new cheers.”
_____“Well, good. But all the same, she is not the kind of girl we want you to have as a friend. She would not be a positive influence.”
_____“Your mother is right, Kimberly. You will have to ask the Westford girl to leave. Now.”
_____Kimberly hung her head and did her best to look dejected by the ruling, but in fact she felt nothing but relief. She could not decide who had appalled her more— the awful boys, or Greta herself, who had encouraged the boys from the moment they had arrived.
_____“Okay. I will tell her to go.”
_____“Does she need a ride home?”
_____“I think she came on a bike. I will ask her.”
_____Kimberly walked back out to the rumpus room and found the door ajar. “Greta?” she hissed.
_____One of the patio sliders had been left open, too.
_____Greta had gone.
_____
________

_____
_____Greta rode Steve Ryan’s bicycle back home under twilight, hid it in the bushes, walked right in through the back door, poked her head into the kitchen entryway, and waved to her mother and father before lugging her red leather book bag up the stairs toward her bedroom. She explained herself in single words. Practice. Late. Rough. Sorry. Night.
_____“Aren’t you hungry?”
_____“No.”
_____“Should I leave something on the counter?”
_____“No, thanks.”
_____Greta ran a bath, poured bubbles into the hot spray, and watched semen ooze down her thighs while she waited for the tub to fill. She reviled herself, but could not tear her eyes from the mirror. She dug her diary and favorite pen out of the book bag and carried them into the hot bubbles, where she soaked and jotted her versified autobiography in the vaguely pleasant mist. Her need to divert herself, more than anything else, explained the way her black diary had filled with ink over the past several months, to the point where she had procured ultra fine pens and had mastered her nearly microscopic longhand script as a means to conserve paper.
_____Only eight blank pages remained. She would have to write even smaller, and all the way to the edges of the paper.
_____The water and bubbles had become quite cool by the time Greta stepped out and dried herself off. She would like to have retreated to the basement, where she would have stood the best chance of softly crying herself to sleep undisturbed, but it was too early. Her parents were still awake, and Mom would have caught her sneaking down there. Greta pulled all her blankets and pillows off the floor and made a nest in the starlight that shown through her bedroom’s bay window, wherein she endeavored to weep softly.
_____
________
_____

_____On Friday, the day before the opening game, the school held a pep rally in the gymnasium. The entire student body attended. The varsity football players dressed in their game jerseys and shoulder pads. The cheerleaders dressed in their uniforms. Greta outright refused to wear the Pocohontas getup, and Coach Janie Ames managed to articulate just a few syllables of her feeble protest before Coach Lewis interjected and told Greta that the standard uniform, over a long sleeved sweater and leggings, would be fine.
_____Kimberly sat as far away from Greta as possible, but apparently watched to see whether Greta noticed, because when several minutes transpired without a single glance by Greta, the girl swept off her bench and strode across the row. She crossed her arms and stood over Greta. “You have a hell of a nerve.”
_____Greta had no idea what Kimberly meant, but absently replied, “I know.”
_____Kimberly tapped her foot on the tiled floor with sufficient force to generate an echo. “You stole my date,” Kimberly elaborated.
_____The claim struck Greta as patently absurd. “Kimmy, try to see the positive. You were a virgin this time yesterday, and you are still a virgin today.”
_____“Yeah. Thanks for nothing. My parents are right. You are a bad influence. You are not a good friend.”
_____“I know,” said Greta.
_____Kimberly strode away, and Greta watched her go, utterly baffled.
_____Greta performed in the pep rally with the rest of the team. It went like a blur. They did not attempt the halftime show on the slippery parquet floor. They simply ran through two or three of the standard cheers and ended each routine with splits in order to thrill the boys and motivate them to recapitulate the age-old jokes about leaving wet spots on the floor. The girls and guys alternated according to gender and formed into facing lines to create a lane with a gate constructed from balloons. On a signal from Janie Ames, Coach Bruno sent a signal of his own, and Greta’s most recent conquests, Steve and Roy, broke through the balloons and led a ragtag lot down the lane of guys and dolls into the center of the gymnasium. Now the girls in the audience had their turns to scream like lunatics. Greta found it all very tiresome.
_____The inevitable confrontation with Cheri occurred after the pep rally. Cheri looked even angrier than she had been when Dr. Marnie Danforth had shut down the spaghetti dinner. Yet she contained herself and did not make a scene. This time she reserved her grievance for Greta specifically.
_____She sat down in the place that ordinarily would have been occupied by Kimberly, if the two freshmen had been getting along. Cheri looked around with confusion, wondered about the difference in her surroundings, and spied Kimberly at the other end of the locker room. Her scowl turned even deeper, yet she somehow still managed to look adorable. She began her interrogation. “What happened to you last night?”
_____Greta did not know how to respond. At first she believed that Cheri referred to the events of the previous evening, at Kimmy’s house. She did not know how to confirm for Cheri that she had taken both Roy and Cheri’s occasional boyfriend, Steve Ryan, repeatedly, while Kimmy had curled in a ball upstairs, beneath her bed. Moreover, Greta did not believe that it was any of Cheri’s business, despite Steve Ryan’s involvement, and she was about to say as much, when Cheri elaborated.
_____“You had a thing to do last night, Goldi. Dinner? My house? Meeting Brian? Does this sound familiar? I mean, shit. My mom even baked. For the first time in her pathetic life.”
_____Greta’s perplexity transformed instantly into anger. “Cheri. I told you no. I told you I had plans last night.”
_____“Yeah, right. What a bunch of crap. A study group with Dogface?”
_____“Don’t call her that.”
_____“Whatever. You mean you weren’t kidding about that?”
_____“No. I wasn’t kidding about that.”
_____“But we were counting on you, you goof!”
_____“Who? Who was counting on me?”
_____“Brian. My brother, like I’ve been saying. God. Can you at least try to keep up? Sheesh. I’d tell you to take notes, but you do that constantly, like some kind of psycho. For all the good it does you.”
_____Greta sighed with frustration. She did not want to keep up. She wanted to finish changing, so that she could get back to her last class of the day, History with Mrs. Neal, on time. She would most likely spend the entire hour hunched over her diary, fantasizing about having to sit the class stripped naked and bent over a desk with her legs spread, for the titillation of all the boys, but she at least wanted to reach her seat without incident, before she crumpled.
_____“Cheri, I need to get to class. I had a rough night, okay?”
_____“A rough night at Danforth’s house?” Cheri asked quizzically, and then shook her head, shaking the question out of her addled brain. “Never mind. Here’s the thing, Westford. You’re missing what’s important here.”
_____Greta stood up and buttoned her jeans. Cheri stood, too.
_____“What is so important about getting your dweeb brother’s dick wet?”
_____Cheri murmured, “Stevie-boy tells me you’re still having trouble from Tally and all his animals.”
_____Greta thought about the false pen, which she had clipped to her collar again today, and said, “I can handle Tally.”
_____“Not alone, you can’t. That’s why I’ve been trying to get you hooked up with Brian, you goof.”
_____“Yeah? And giving a charity screw to your dumb brother helps my predicament how, exactly?”
_____“It doesn’t. Not directly. But it’s a good cover.”
_____“Cheri, damn it, I have to get to class. I don’t have time for your crap. This place is such a soap opera.”
_____Cheri pouted, “So you’re really not gonna ride with my brother to and from the game?”
_____“Jesus Christ, Cheri! Your brother is a loser!”
_____“I know. Will you forget him for a second? Your missing the big picture.”
_____“What big picture?”
_____Cheri took Greta’s hand, pulled her outside through the back door, slammed the door shut behind them, and pulled her down onto the steps. They sat upon the steps and looked out on the practice fields.
_____Cheri said, “Coach Bruno. He’s an animal. His buddies, Klein and Mayer, they’re animals, too. Tally, their boss? He’s the biggest animal on the premises. A real bastard. He’s a perve with a giant chip on his shoulder, bigger than the rest of them combined. And now, with Dogface Danforth’s aunty screwing up Tally’s little utopia, he’s gonna be ten times worse. Faith and I have survived this meat grinder for three years. You haven’t asked how.”
_____“Wrong, Cheri. I have asked how. And you keep going on about my having to date your stupid brother.”
_____“It’s not my brother, per se. He just gets you into the club.”
_____“What club?”
_____Cheri put her head to Greta’s and whispered, “My Mom and Dad. They’re... weird. They’re kind of like swingers. They have been, all of their lives.”
_____Greta harshly groaned, “Cheri. I know that.”
_____Cheri sat back, frowning. “You do?”
_____“Yes. Of course I do. Our parents work together, remember? Your Mom was a Dymetrix office accessory. Maybe still is, for all I know. And your father screws around with half the secretaries. Your whole family skeeves me out, even though I haven’t even met them. That is why I knew your brother was a dork, before he ever opened his mouth or sent me a half-literate love note.”
_____Cheri stammered, “How the fuck do you know my Mom’s a sales whore? Oh... oh.” The comprehension that blossomed on the ditzy blonde’s face made Greta want to laugh. Cheri murmured, “That’s right. Your dad is some kind of lawyer for the company, isn’t he?”
_____“Yes, Cheri. I have been in his files, out of boredom more than anything else, so I know your mom and dad are twisted freaks.”
_____Cheri, undeterred by the insult, continued, “Okay, so at least you’re up to speed. Here’s the thing. My parents and Faith’s parents are pretty tight, if you know what I mean. And they’re tight with Tally, too. They were tight with Dr. Girardieu, until he was fired. Of course no one knows who will be next, because Girardieu’s flailing around like an asshole on fire. Something has to be done about him, before he spills his guts to the cops. On top of that, the talk is that Danforth has it in for Tally and Bruno, too. That’s why the boys are so twitchy. They’re just hired help.”
_____“Cheri. Your Dad is hired help.”
_____“Sure he is. But he ranks a hell of a lot higher than Tally. My Dad and Mr. Ryan— they’re not quite the top dogs, but they run the school from behind the scenes. Tally owes our Dads big.”
_____“For what?”
_____“For giving him Faith and myself to play with, for the past three years, you goof. So now Tally’s trying to pay our dads back.”
_____“With me,” Greta concluded.
_____“Finally, she gets it. Your dad and the owner’s son have been raining on my Dad’s parade at that company for the past few years, trying to take all their sales whores away. My Dad bitches about ‘fucking Max Westford’ and ‘fucking Nelson Spencer’ constantly. He yells out your dad’s name in his goddamned sleep. My Dad, Faith’s dad, and all their pals want their revenge for all the trouble your goody-two-shoes-Daddy has been causing. You’re the prize, Goldi. The Dymetrix lawyer’s ultrahot sextoy daughter.”
_____Greta couldn’t believe it. Cheri revealed yet another layer on the onion, another pair of execrable old bastards who wanted to sweat and strain over her, when all she wanted was to be left alone.
_____“Cheri, I don’t know. I have enough dirty old bastards in my life. I don’t need your Dad and Mr. Ryan on top of everything else. No offense.”
_____It didn’t occur to Cheri to take offense. She just maintained her momentum. “But they could help you. With your problem here. Don’t you get it, G-Spot? The way they’ve protected Faith and me since grade school. My dad, and Faith Ryan’s dad, can keep Tally and Bruno in line, so they’re not whaling on you all the time.”
_____So, Greta had to screw the two of them. She had to spread for Cheri’s pig father, and Faith Ryan’s pig father, the two slovenly shits who had turned their own daughters into whores. Just great. “And riding the bus with Brian solves all my problems, does it?”
_____“It does get you and my Dad together. He’s wanted to hook up with you for the past couple weeks. That’s why he’s been hovering around the practices ever since you showed up unannounced and nailed a varsity spot. Hell, you could have hooked up with Dad last night, if you hadn’t been screwing around with homework over at Dogface’s house.”
_____“I told you not to call her that.”
_____“Oh come on, Greta! Don’t be a poop! Say you’ll at least hang with Brian to and from. There’s a victory party after the game. You can ride with us. Stevie-boy and me, that is.”
_____Greta began to perceive the glimmer of a plan. All this time she had believed that, with the ouster of the old principal, Dr. Girardieu, that left Tally as the head of the beast. She had begun to plot ways of achieving some small measure of retribution. Yet now she knew that vengeance on Tally would have come to nothing. Greta might have to insert herself into the sordid lives of the office accessory and her family, after all.
_____“I don’t know, Cheri. I will think about it.”
_____“Goldi! The game is tomorrow!”
_____“I said I will think about it.”
_____Cheri did not like Greta’s answer one bit.
_____They returned to the locker room and were immediately accosted by Coach Janie Ames, who had been looking for Greta, and who told her that she had been summoned to the main office.
_____Cheri made desperate eyes at Greta, who just stared forward and walked in a daze.
_____The bell for final period rang just as Greta reached the main office. She should have been settling into Mrs. Neal’s history class at that moment. She stood at the counter and waited to catch the attention of the receptionist. She still did not know whom she had been summoned to see. She hoped that she would not be sent into Mr. Tally’s office. She had endured enough abuse from him already. The receptionist, however, sent her into Dr. Marnie Danforth’s office. So, Greta mused. A new tormentor. She would be abused afresh.
_____She entered the office and paled: her mother already sat there, in one of the two chairs that faced the desk.
_____Anne Westford sat primly on the chair, legs crossed and hands folded, obviously seething. Not a full week of the first term had passed, and yet here Anne sat, called into a disciplinary meeting. For Greta.
_____The girl sat in the adjacent chair, at the opposite corner of the principal’s desk. Neither the mother nor the daughter acknowledged the other with words. Greta could see, with her peripheral vision, that her mother had that look of being terribly inconvenienced. She had obviously come here straight from the tennis court, as she had not changed from her skirt and sports shirt, yet after having purportedly spent two hours on the court, Mother had not broken a sweat. Greta stared at a bright crack in the window blinds.
_____The principal formally introduced herself to Anne Westford and said, “Now we can begin.”
_____Greta’s mother started right in with no subtlety. “What has she done?”
_____“Nothing. Yet.”
_____“Wonder of wonders,” muttered Anne. A question had been burning since she had walked in the door. Being active on the PTO, she had thought she had known every teacher and administrator. “What happened to Dr. Girardieu?”
_____The new principal dispassionately said, “The school board terminated him in closed session three weeks ago. I am a contractor, filling the position on an interim basis, until the school board meets at the end of the month and either offers me an employment contract or selects another candidate.”
_____“I had not heard of any of this,” Anne coldly remarked, as though that should be enough to settle the question of the claim’s authenticity.
_____“No, you haven’t. None of the PTO mommies and other Stepford wives have heard of it, due to the ongoing investigation.”
_____Anne Westford disregarded the jibe, for the present, and demanded, “What investigation?”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth ignored the question. “You also have not heard that the superintendent is on paid administrative leave, or that the middle school principal, vice principal, and gym teachers have all been replaced with temporaries such as myself. This has been a busy summer. Ordinarily, the summer is devoted to refreshing the curriculum, and on the first week the school the administration should be giving its attention to mundane busywork, such as welcoming an incoming freshman class. Yet, I have called you in, not only to suffer your impetuous third degree, but also to give my day to one incoming freshman, out of one hundred and sixty, in particular. Are you beginning to see the connection here?”
_____The temporary principal, having defused the mother for a moment, now turned her gaze on Greta, who still had not taken her eyes from the window blinds and appeared not to have been listening.
_____Anne looked at her daughter as well, apparently a less intimidating object of fixation than this disarmingly incisive pro tempore administrator.
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth said, “The middle school administrators and gym teachers are all golf pals. They allegedly emailed the principal of this school, divulging details of Greta’s file, the details of the locker room episode in particular— a file which should have remained sealed— and urged him to share Greta’s sexual services, once your daughter transferred here in the fall. The principal of this school, Dr. Girardieu, allegedly agreed to share. By email. He has been terminated, and he will be served with felony charges in the near future. The superintendent of schools also received emails about Greta and her— talents— but is not known to have responded. All of the computers in the superintendent’s office and at his home have been seized, and he is on paid administrative leave, pending findings.
_____“Mrs. Westford, you have my assurance that Greta won’t get a single inch of slack from me, at this school, because it so happens that I have resolved to acquire this position on a full time basis, if I can. I made that resolution before I learned, just this morning, the extent to which the entire school system is infested with swill. You are here because, all cursory evidence to the contrary, it would appear that Greta comes from a respectable family. I want your assurance, here in this room, that you will not be cutting her any slack, either.”
_____“Meaning what, specifically?”
_____“For starters, I will not tolerate a repeat of last year’s infamous Locker Room Incident on these premises.”
_____Anne Westford stood up and demanded, “Stop right there. I insist on speaking to you alone.”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth glanced between the mother and her daughter. “Very well. Miss Westford, would you please step outside? When your mother and I have finished, my assistant will send you back in, so please do not wander.”
_____Greta glared at them both, without a word, and stepped out. She returned to the reception area, challenged every stare until all the opposing eyes backed down, and took out her little black diary.
_____The instant the door closed, Anne’s maternal instinct kicked in. “Before you say another word, listen up. Are you aware that my daughter went out for cheerleading against my wishes?”
_____“Yes.”
_____“I called in and demanded that she be cut. She made the varsity squad regardless.”
_____“I am aware of that. I am told she gave a strong performance at trials.”
_____“So you defied me and let her join. And yet you have the temerity to insinuate that I need help raising my own daughter.”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth said, “Not at all. I do not intend on helping you with your job. I am responsible for her deportment while she is under this roof. As to the cheerleading program, whatever stories you have heard, they are in the past. We have made the necessary adjustments.”
_____“Such as?”
_____“To begin with, we have a new, better trained coach. And the cheerleading program is coed, now.”
_____“Oh, that will be a big help! Your staff have intentionally contravened my wishes.”
_____“It is Greta’s wish that she be a cheerleader, and it is the duty of my staff to indulge her extracurricular interests in a safe, hospitable environment.”
_____“You obviously have no idea of the reputation of the cheerleading program— what it has been, and is, to this day.”
_____“The past has no relevance to me. We have a new staff, and a new program, effective this season. Frankly, I do resent your insinuations that I am not taking this matter seriously. After all, the other freshman varsity cheerleader is my own niece.”
_____“That’s your business,” Anne snapped, without missing a beat, “if you wish to feed your own niece to the wolves. I want my daughter out of it.”
_____“Then take that up with your daughter. I am not in the business of mediating between parents and their children. I have already told you the purpose for your being here: to assure you that unauthorized extracurricular activities, such as your daughter’s infamous locker room episode, will not be tolerated under my watch. The extent of your involvement in your daughter’s choices, if any, is solely between Greta and yourself.”
_____“Allowing her to participate in the cheerleading program is simply putting temptation in her path, and it is the height of hypocrisy!”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth retorted, “Then we shall bring her back in. You will forbid her. I will back you up.”
_____Anne ground her teeth, and scowled, but could say nothing.
_____“Can’t do it, can you?” Dr. Marnie Danforth sweetly observed. “I do not secure many permanent positions, Mrs. Westford. I am known as a fixer. I am paid very well for it. And in my travels, I can’t tell you the number of times this little scenario has played out. It always seems to be the squeakiest wheels who need the most grease. PTO mommies demanding a particular teacher for their little prodigies. Type-A obsessive compulsive daddies demanding less homework on the weekend, so Johnny can go to Bible school and learn that Darwinian theory is blasphemy. Girls who won’t tell their parents about their use of contraception, and their parents, who demand that we break federal law by opening their teen childrens’ medical records. Catholic mommies who insist that Jews and atheists greet their angels with ‘Merry Christmas,’ and atheist daddies who demand that we twist the English language into knots with some new euphemism, so they can flout and mock American heritage. Being a fixer can be so wearisome, Mrs. Westford. You can’t possibly imagine. I am only thirty-two. Look a lot older, don’t I? Still single. Can’t hold a second date. A thirty-two year old shrew. Ah, well. The money does console me. On some days. I took this position by phone, and I have been here, in fair Winchester, all of one week. I have to tell you, I must admit that I like it here. Might be time for a change. I just might decide to settle down here for a season or two. So, I would strongly advise you to spread the word to all the big-fish mommies in the PTO that there is a new sheriff in town.”
_____Anne Westford could not find words.
_____“You have an extraordinarily bright daughter. Her IQ is off the charts, and she has aced the State scholastic exams. She could, and should, go on to higher education, after distinguishing herself scholastically over the next four years, and she should make something of herself. She could, and she should. Nevertheless, if I catch her in the locker room, or a coat closet, or a classroom, with a boy or boys in a compromising position, she will be summarily expelled on the spot. You have been officially notified. One strike, and Miss Greta Elisabeta Westford is out.
_____“Now, if you please, it is my turn. I wish to speak to your daughter alone. You are excused. Please be so kind as to send her back in, on your way out.”
_____Anne Westford glowered at Dr. Marnie Danforth and gave her daughter a warning glare as she left the office. The door closed. Dr. Danforth gestured to the chair, which Greta took. Dr. Danforth tapped her fingers together, and gave the girl a long, penetrating stare.
_____Greta returned the stare, and Dr. Danforth might have wondered how the girl could do it, were she not struck by Greta’s indifference. Here was a young woman, Dr. Danforth observed, who would not fold under torture. On one level, Dr. Danforth could not help but be fascinated with the girl, and her social psychology background led her to wonder what could have wounded Greta so acutely as to have transformed her so far beyond the merely suicidal state as to be indifferent to whether she should live or die. Such cases were rare— a subject who might just as well kill herself off as go on, but could summon the energy neither to carry out the act nor to ask for help; a subject who would accept anything, even the most violent and loathsome incursions on her person, merely for sake of a change in the tedium. Such people, with training and motivation, were coveted by intelligence agencies for their value as operatives, yet motivation was always the rub. Subjects such as Miss Westford were past caring— even for themselves— and thus, their loyalty was the biggest challenge. Almost anything could turn them, any distraction at all, from their programmed rubric, which explained why the propensity for deep operatives to turn traitor so often rose in proportion to their competency in the field. Yet, such people as Miss Westford were difficult to identify and cultivate in the first place, because their wiring made them so susceptible to falling through the cracks. People like Greta could make excellent interrogators and covert operatives, but they also made highly adept serial killers, the rare variety of murderer that possessed need of neither fame nor notoriety, and could effectively operate within society, undetected, for decades. Dr. Marnie Danforth had a stack of files devoted to the misdeeds and proclivities of the school’s miscreants and recidivists. Some already had criminal histories. Yet Miss Westford’s file had percolated right to the top of the pile. She was not a mere bully or junkie. A procession of state appointed and private psychiatrists had taken a crack at Greta— had made her repeat sixth grade to do so— and not a single one had been granted a look into the mind of this bright, pretty, outgoing, effusive young woman who just might grow up to be an ultra-violent sociopath. And now, as Dr. Marnie Danforth took a deep breath and reached a pause in her contemplation, the first question came to her.
_____“Greta, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
_____Greta immediately replied, “I haven’t gotten that far in my deliberations.”
_____“Of course not. But you must realize that you have potential. A great deal of potential.”
_____Greta thought to herself that Stalin had had potential as well. Mao. Hitler. Lenin. Pol Pot. History was littered with atrocity perpetrated by men and woman possessed of great potential. She did not reply. Potential meant nothing.
_____“You must occasionally give thought as to what you would like to do with your life.”
_____“No. Never.” Not at all true, of course. Greta had once nursed dreams, and somewhere, beneath layers of impenetrable scar tissue, those dreams lingered still.
_____“I have read your file. Those parts of it which are not closed. You found yourself in a great deal of trouble in middle school last year. I can offer you a clean break. A fresh start. You could apply yourself studiously for the next four years. Participate in cheerleading, if that is what you wish to do. And when you decide what you would like to do with yourself, after your four years here, you would be in a position to achieve it.”
_____Greta glared at the principal. Could this Doctor of Pedagogy, or Psychology, or whatever, not see, on the surface of it, that she, Greta, was broken? That everything had been taken from her? Why would these purported experts never just once open their eyes and see that? How could they not have been trained to instantaneously identify irreparable dysfunction?
_____Greta yearned to say, ‘Maybe I want to be a whore.’ but it would be childish, petty. Sure, it would shock this myopic bitch, but it would be the last opportunity to play with her. Dr. Marnie Danforth would lose all respect, dismiss her from the office, and cast her out, to be dealt with by the gristmill— perverted teachers, detentions, abuse. ‘Fine, you little bitch, go ahead and be a whore.’ That would be the unarticulated essence of the final dismissal. And Greta did not want to be dismissed. This temporary principal, who just might get the post for the next four years, fascinated Greta. She wanted to know more about Dr. Marnie Danforth. Most of all, she was curious as to how this stern young pedagogue would deal with the likes of Cheri and Brian Donner, and the legacy of the Dymetrix sales internship program, as the depths of its depravity gradually unfolded. Would Dr. Marnie Danforth take the sports teams’ illicit incentive programs apart brick by brick, and oust the coaches, teachers, players, parents, and other participants who had only been hinted at? Or would the good principal be drawn in and subverted by the concealed decadence that lurked beneath the glossy polish of this bastion of affluent suburbia? In short, Greta had something to live for, after all. She wanted to play.
_____“I have been told that I would make a good lawyer,” she timidly offered.
_____The principal slowly nodded and observed, “Your father is a corporate attorney. Has he told you that?”
_____“No.” Her father had called her shiftless. Last year. After the locker room incident. “A friend. My best friend, actually. She maintains that I am much like my Dad.” Greta made a wry smirk and remarked, “You are surprised. That I have a friend.”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth neither acknowledged nor denied her surprise. She simply asked, “A friend at this school?”
_____“No.”
_____“Is this friend a young woman, or a young gentleman?”
_____“There are no gentlemen. Men are animals.”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth observed, “In my experience, a great many woman are animals as well.”
_____Greta sat back in her chair and appraised the principal with new respect.
_____The principal asked, “Greta, what do you value most in people?”
_____“Strength.”
_____“More than intelligence?”
_____“Intelligence is nothing. Intelligence without strength will get us all killed.”
_____“Does that trouble you?”
_____“Not enough for me to care.”
_____What do you value most in your mother?”
_____Greta chuckled.
_____“Something funny?”
_____“No. Wearisome.”
_____“How so?”
_____“I have been subjected to them all. Freud. Jung. Alport. Maslow. Skinner was the worst. Behaviorists make my skin crawl. An autonomic response.” She paused and watched.
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth looked back.
_____“That was a joke,” said Greta Elisabeta.
_____“I know. I am incapable of laughter. You were saying?”
_____Greta could not help but be impressed. A smooth operator, thus far. “Your question, about my mother, was premature. Oedipus ordinarily comes first. Electra follows, at uttermost need. But you could perhaps be excused. You have just met my Mom, and you have observed for yourself that we do not get along. It would all be so simple, so... explainable, if I harbored some secret resentment toward my mother. She does love me, after a fashion. It is true she is angry that I have defied her and gone out for cheerleading, but I don’t begrudge her. Certainly over nothing so trivial and insipid as another overproduced waste of my afternoons. She only wants what is best for me, and her judgments as to what is best do not always mesh conveniently with mine. I could even drop out for her, just to indulge her, because to be honest I would rather be alone in my room, most of the time I am in cheerleading practice. I would quit, if I thought it would help. But quitting would not help, and I honestly could not care less what my mother thinks of me. Nothing will help; of that I am certain. So I do not see the point of making any extraordinary effort to appease her.”
_____“So you don’t feel any love for your mother, or obligation to her?”
_____“Of course I love her. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”
_____“And cheerleading? Why does that matter? Enough to waste your afternoons there, I mean?”
_____“It doesn’t. I made the squad, so I am in.”
_____“I have the power to eject you from the squad. Here and now.”
_____“Then do it.”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth wanted to do it, just to call the girl’s bluff, and see whether her anomie could possibly run as deeply as she implied.
_____“Your mother suggested that you would be better off on the swim team, or on the tennis team.”
_____Greta shrugged.
_____“Are you a good tennis player?”
_____“We have a court in our backyard. I am the best in our neighborhood, among children through adults. I have never played for a team, so I would have no way of knowing whether I am good or bad, beyond our little subdivision.”
_____“And swimming?”
_____“We also have a fifty foot pool. Indoor. In winter, that is. We put up a heated bubble every November, and take it down in May. I swim every other day, all year long. I can freestyle a full lap, up and back, on a single breath.”
_____“Your family is well to do. Even for Winchester.”
_____“We do all right.”
_____“So, if I were to accede to your mother’s wishes, against my better judgment, and cut you from cheerleading, you would have other activities to pursue.”
_____“Oh no, I wouldn’t.”
_____“You wouldn’t?” Marnie repeated levelly.
_____“No. Cut me from cheerleading, and I won’t do a thing. I will flunk every course, or get myself expelled, whichever comes first.”
_____“I don’t respond well to ultimata, Miss Westford.”
_____“I don’t respond well to coercion.” The understatement of her lifetime, she reflected with an icy glare.
_____“And if I let you stay in cheerleading, you will keep your nose clean, and apply yourself for the next four years?”
_____Greta stared right back and said, “Sure. I will pretend to give a damn. But as for keeping it clean, that will be up to the filth that pass for faculty here, because I won’t stand for their crap.”
_____“Anything you wish to tell me?”
_____“No. You figure it out.”
_____Dr. Marnie Danforth stood and said, “You may go.”
_____Greta rose from her seat and headed for the door.
_____As she opened the door, the principal added, “And Miss Westford? In future, you will address me respectfully and without invective, or you shall have detention.”
_____“Yes, Ma’am.”
_____Greta took a note back to history class. Now she knew what had happened to Dr. Girardieu. She understood the pressures that had transformed Mr. Tally from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. She knew that as Dr. Marnie Danforth continued to turn up the heat on their little extracurricular sex club, they would become ever more frenzied, like water on a stove. Greta sat in history class, bent over her diary, and promised herself, through the medium of her diminutive script, that she would not be carried down into their cesspool to drown with them.
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If you have enjoyed this story and want to know what happens next, go to Kimmy Chooses Rape.
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[clarise]

Apology to readers: while making fast edits for continuity, I've introduced a few typos that I can't fix with this forum's 10 minute time limit. For instance: "...carry you're books and stuff...."

There are probably others. Sheesh.